


You're Not Sorry

by katybaggins



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Awesome Molly, Confused Sherlock, Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, F/M, Sherlolly Appreciation Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 11:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10920759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katybaggins/pseuds/katybaggins
Summary: After Mary's death, Sherlock goes to the one person he knows can help: Molly Hooper. First Kiss prompt for Sherlolly Week. This also is The Kiss from This is Your Heart.





	You're Not Sorry

It had been a long day at the morgue, and when Molly finally arrives home, all she wants to do is curl up with a cup of tea and a good book. But she barely sits down with her novel when she receives a text from Mycroft Holmes of all people.

_I am sending something to your flat. Please handle it with care._

Molly frowns. She doesn’t know what that means at all or why Mycroft is sending any message to her. But somehow she can sense that something isn’t right. That feeling is solidified when she hears a key turn in the lock. Only one other person has a key to her flat besides herself and that’s because she gave it to him. She sets her book aside and walks to her door.

Sherlock stands in the entryway, wearing his trademark coat. But his characteristic confidence is gone, replaced by complete and utter defeat. His whole countenance is far beyond downcast, and she can only remember seeing him like this only one other time. And she knows beyond a doubt that something is wrong. “What happened?” she says softly.

He doesn’t met her eyes, only stares at a point near her foot. “Mary-…..Mary’s…..” He breaks off in the middle of the sentence, unable to continue.

But he doesn’t need to. _Mary’s dead._ Suddenly Mycroft’s text completely makes sense. Please take care of my brother. That’s what he is really asking her to do. “Sherlock, come in, please. Tell me what happened.”

Silently he hangs his coat by the door and even though she knows she’s not supposed to hear it, he sighs. A long, deep hopeless sigh that shoots straight through her heart. And it’s as if she can finally see the guilt that threatens to consume him. He turns to look at her and she doesn’t even pretend that she wasn’t looking at him. But he doesn’t say anything. Instead he wordlessly follows her to her couch and sits down next to her. Without prompting, he tells her everything: Mary’s job as an assassin, A.G.R.A, the trapping of Vivian Norbury, how he deduced her, how she’d fired her own gun at him.

At that point, the devastated look in his eyes breaks her heart. “And Mary took the bullet meant for me,” he says. “It’s…it’s my fault.”

Again she can hear everything that he won’t say aloud.

_It’s my fault because I let my mouth run away with me again._

_It’s my fault that Vivian fired her gun._

_It’s my fault that Mary’s dead._

_It’s my fault Rosie doesn’t have a mother anymore._

_It’s my fault that John lost his wife._

_It’s all my fault…_

Molly isn’t sure what to say. Those who know him seem to think that he isn’t aware of how he makes mistakes. But he is. He is far too aware of it and he blames himself for far more than he ever should - and he hates himself for it. This is just another example. Yes, he shouldn’t have said what he did to Vivian. But she still chose to fire her gun and Mary chose to save his life. No one made her do it. And, God help her, she can’t help the small amount of relief that she feels that he isn’t dead. Mary was her friend, and of course she grieves the loss of her. Her heart breaks for both John and little Rosie - who now is motherless. But she is so glad it wasn’t Sherlock.

“….It was all my fault, Molly,” he says hoarsely. “And-….and now John won’t speak to me.”

She closes her eyes. Of course John won’t speak to him. That’s what John always does when he’s angry with Sherlock - he shuts him out. It’s exactly what he did when Sherlock came back. She’s never liked it. Actually, she hates it, because it’s wrong, but now isn’t the time to say so. Instead she reaches out and touches one of his hands gently. “Sherlock, look at me.”

He looks at her, and she sees tears welling up in the corners in his eyes. “It was _not_ your fault.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No,” he mumbles. “No. It was, it was -…..” She draws him into her arms and he doesn’t resist. His own arms wrap around her and he buries his face in her shoulder. She feels the wetness of his tears on her shirt and one of her hands reaches to gently stroke his hair. But she doesn’t say it’s okay because it’s not. It never will be. But at least he knows that she’s here, that she cares. Soon she begins to cry herself because she loved Mary. Mary was her friend and she lost her.

She doesn’t know how long they cry together but it could be moments or hours. She doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he isn’t alone in his grief. Eventually he pulls away from her and he studies her with an inscrutable expression. She can’t even begin to understand what it means. There’s something….something almost tender in his eyes when he looks at her. Like she’s special to him. Like she _counts._ And she’s reminded of those words he said a long time ago.

_Because the one person he thought didn’t matter at all to me was the one person that mattered the most._

His hands reach up and they almost shake as they gently cup the sides of her face. He begins to lean in close to her and she would think, if he were any other man, that he is about to kiss her. But this is _Sherlock_ , so surely she must be wrong. Maybe she still has tears in her eyes or maybe she’s just imagining things in her grief because there is no chance that he would _ever_ ….

He kisses her. She would be lying if she says that she hasn’t thought about what it might be like to kiss him, but it’s everything that she thought it would be, and at the same time it isn’t at all. She never thought that it would happen after they cried together or that it would be prompted out of grief. But somehow she knows this isn’t just because he’s sad about Mary. It can’t be. He’s not like that; he’s never like that. He doesn’t do anything without thinking about it first, and she can tell that he has thought about this moment, just like she has. He’s kissing her now because he _wants_ to, because he _means_ it.

And that will scare him. It will frighten him out of his mind because it’s _real._

So she isn’t terribly surprised when he stops kissing her abruptly. His hands suddenly fall away from her cheeks and he stares at the crack between the cushions of her couch - anywhere but at her face. “I’m sorry,” he mutters.

She isn’t sure why he’s apologizing. She won’t believe for one second that he regrets kissing her, so maybe he’s sorry that it happened in such a circumstance as this. But she doesn’t care what reason he has. “I’m not, Sherlock,” she says. “I’m _not_ sorry. And neither are you.”

He shuts his eyes as if her words pain him. “Molly-…..”

“You’re _not_ sorry,” she says, quieter this time. “But I understand that you can’t process it right now. That’s okay. But don’t you tell me for one _minute_ that you’re sorry. That was real, Sherlock Holmes. You wanted to kiss me. And you know it.”

He shakes his head and his shoulders slump. And it’s as if she can see the exhaustion that bears down on him. He needs sleep badly. She sighs before she grabs hold of his hand again, and he follows her to her bedroom. She drops his hand and rummages through one of the drawers of her bureau - the one that is full of his own things. This won’t be the first time he’s slept in her bed, and she knows that Meena would laugh and say some kind of innuendo about it. But truthfully there is nothing really there. When he does sleep next to her, it’s about as sexually charged as an autopsy. He needs to sleep and he can when she’s there. And she doesn’t mind because she always sleeps better as well.

Now she tosses a t-shirt and pajama pants at him. He catches them and leaves the room to change. They don’t even need to talk because this has happened numerous times. She changes into her own pajamas and curls up under the covers. Soon she feels the bed dip next to her and she knows he’s here. But she doesn’t reach out and touch him. Instead she lies awake until the sound of his breathing lulls her to sleep.


End file.
